Sachin=GOD Posted July 29, 2015 Share Posted July 29, 2015 Now started part 1 of the 8 parts of Bibek Debroy's English translation of Mahabharata. Earlier also read a 2 part modern retelling of Mahabharata by Ramesh Menon. Didn't particularly like these books - the author unnecessarily changed lots of small story lines. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalia_Test Posted July 29, 2015 Share Posted July 29, 2015 Now started part 1 of the 8 parts of Bibek Debroy's English translation of Mahabharata. Earlier also read a 2 part modern retelling of Mahabharata by Ramesh Menon. Didn't particularly like these books - the author unnecessarily changed lots of small story lines. I had read the 2 books by Ramesh Menon. He has a different style like how he describes Krishna the blue bodied. His descriptions of Arjuna's fight while in Indraloka and Pasupata were good IMO. If you want translation and not retelling - then nothing better than the one by Kisari Mohan Ganguly. Not sure of Bibek Debroy. Heard that he is the first one to attempt translation after KMG ( which was more than a century ago ). Entire KMG Mbh is available free online. Do post here if you find BD's version good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sachin=GOD Posted July 29, 2015 Share Posted July 29, 2015 I had read the 2 books by Ramesh Menon. He has a different style like how he describes Krishna the blue bodied. His descriptions of Arjuna's fight while in Indraloka and Pasupata were good IMO. If you want translation and not retelling - then nothing better than the one by Kisari Mohan Ganguly. Not sure of Bibek Debroy. Heard that he is the first one to attempt translation after KMG ( which was more than a century ago ). Entire KMG Mbh is available free online. Do post here if you find BD's version good. Yes. I found it a bit peculiar - he didn't really need to describe Krishna as The Dark One or The Blue One every single time he was mentioned. Same with Panchali (called her Dark Panchali in almost all instances where she was mentioned). Yeah....the description of Devalok was particularly good. Also, he wrote the entire war part in the 2nd book quite well. Abhimanyu and Ghatothkach's exploits were described in a fantastic manner. I have the KMG version but it is a COMPLETE translation so its way too big. Maybe I'll read it later..... Let's see. The Debroy version is called the best translation in the last few decades and it is not as big as KMG so I have started with that (if you read ebooks then I can give all 8 parts....and quite a few other books on Mahabharata). I'm about 20% done with the 1st book and till now it's quite good (only one complain - I guess the original text uses different names of the same God again and again - like Indra/Shakra/Purandar/Devraj/Vasav etc for Indra. Debroy has also done it and obviously he has done it to maintain the accuracy of the translation but I would have preferred that he use only the most popular name (Indra or Shiva or Vishnu or Brahma etc for the respective Gods) so as to make it less complicated.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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